photo by: Skeptiko

Every since Gordon White appeared on Skeptiko to talk about his book Star.Ships, I’ve been itching to get him back on to talk about his research into the secret space program and how this conspiratorial view of things might be helpful in understanding science-as-we-know-it. Gordon delivered big time by guest hosting and bringing us this interview with plasma physicist and Mars researcher Dr. John Brandenburg:

AlexTsakiris: This interview that you’ve done with Dr. John Brandenburg requires a little bit of contextualization. Before we start with Dr. Brandenburg’s theories, which are extremely controversial and can take us in a million places, do you want to tell us who he is?

GordonWhite: Dr. Brandenburg is a plasma phycisist who has spent any number of years with Top Secret clearance, occasionally not. [And] working in the privatized Space Program so he’s XJPL. He’s worked on the Clementine mission. He’s worked in some of the companies that have fed into the Regan Star Wars program. That’s been his career.

AlexTsakiris: Let me just fill in one detail: you say hard scientist. If you scan the internet for this guy, you’re likely to see, as you always will on anything that’s interesting, a lampooning of him in a number of different ways, [but] let’s be clear: Cal-Davis PhD. Theoretical Plasma Physics from Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. That’s top notch; the real deal. That’s a nerdy scientist. Sandia Labs, JPL…all of the places; rubbing shoulders with Carl Sagan — a personal relationship. Exchanging emails and telephone calls. [Also] Richard Hoagland. This is the real deal so if you do run across [him] in that Google search, and he’s portrayed as some kind of buffoon, that’s not the case here.

GordonWhite: One thing is verifiable, we can prove based on this conversation and some casual research afterward, there is a section of the Anglo-American military that believes there are artificial remains elsewhere in the solar system. Whether there are or not is frankly open to interpretation. But it is self-evident in the policy over the last 70 years, that an element of the American Military Industrial establishment believes there are artificial remains around the solar system and it’s affecting policy. It is affecting internal policy and it’s affecting off planet policy.

I think when Dr. Brandenburg says quote, “They want this information out,” if they did I would suggest they go to the New York Times. What they’ve done is given it to brilliant, rigorous, oddball groups because you’ve run a P&L. You know what it’s like. You don’t want the dog project on your books, but you do need the research anyway. That was Dr. Valet’s conclusion as to why FBI agents would show up to a UFO conference in the middle of nowhere. They’re not there in some kind of mysterious way that maybe someone’s [has] burst out with some secrets. They’re actually there because we’re in an area where we have to outsource the research because the dis-info component that comes with the National Security implications makes it very difficult to otherwise navigate.

GordonWhite: So we have a Xenon range that’s observable in the entire solar system. We have Xenon 129 which is not naturally occurring. It’s exclusively a weapon’s signature.

Dr. Brandenburg: Let’s say it’s normally equal to a Xenon 132 in its distribution. When you get a large excess of Xenon 129–you can basically ration Xenon 129 to Xenon 132. That’s what tells you it’s a weapon’s signature.

GordonWhite: So we have a Xenon range that’s observable in the entire solar system. We have Xenon 129 which is not naturally occurring. It’s exclusively a weapon’s signature.

GordonWhite: Got you. And we know that because we have atmospheric samples from before where we’re using nuclear weapons on earth; where we have a kind of normal ration between these two, and then we have the subsequent one after 1945, then on after the amount of bombs we’ve dropped and plutonium we’ve weaponized on this planet. We find a more alarming ratio.

Dr. Brandenburg: An absolute predominance of Xenon 129 and the change of the atmosphere.

GordonWhite: So to be clear, let’s put that together with the stuff we’ve been talking about over the course of the last hour. The western space program began in earnest with the belief or strong supposition there were artificial structures on Mars. Over the course of that discovery you have things like armed guards showing up at photo labs.

Dr. Brandenburg: And Dr. Wernher von Braun is suggesting archeologists be sent to Mars in the first mission.

GordonWhite: We also find out that Mars is earth-like. And you yourself had something to do with that [discovery].

Dr. Brandenburg: By the way, that’s why it’s red. We’ll get to that in a minute.

GordonWhite: And then we find out…

Dr. Brandenburg: The big clues that Mars is like the earth of the past is not only the river but its very redness.

Gordon White: And then we find out that it has an atmospheric signature that is associated with weapons. It has a weapon’s signature in its atmosphere and that’s what you found.

Dr. Brandenburg: That’s right. And subsequently we have now found that the other shoe on the distribution is krypton gas (another inert gas). When it has a specific distribution of isotopes, favoring light isotopes, that is a secondary piece of evidence. It’s like finding the bullet in the wall and then, oh yes, here is the shell casing from the cartridge that was fired. You found the bullet, that’s the Xenon 129. There should be a shell casing around here (that’s the krypton isotopes). Yes, they verify.

[easy-tweet tweet=”we have to outsource research because the dis-info component [of the secret space program]”]

Gordon White: In the early 20th century it was sort of self-evident that what we assumed that when we got to Mars or we built a telescope that was powerful enough to see things, we would see ruins in the remains of a civilization or even one that still existed. And that was normal. It was New York Times stuff. It didn’t break civilization. There’s this meme in ufology that the quote-unquote “reason” why this stuff is covered up is because civilization will collapse. That’s not correct. We thought that beforehand, but somewhere in the mid-20th century, the presence of artificial structures elsewhere in the solar system became a National Security interest.

Dr. Brandenburg: Mars always fascinated me as child growing up in the Space Age in America where we were mesmerized by the Mercury Moon race; the whole drama of the Mercury program; the Gemini program and finally Apollo and the landing on the moon. Watching of course the Russians be ahead at first, and then very brave cosmonauts out there in space also and then finally fall behind with the destruction of their big N-1 rocket so they couldn’t make it to the moon whereas we did. In the middle of this is Wernher von Braun, a rather anomalous character. Didn’t he used to work for the Nazis? That’s the question that came to my mind when I was a kid. But there he was, now transformed into an all-American hero. He wants to go to the moon but he really wants to go to Mars. That is his real goal. Then he says something very cryptic after landing on the moon successfully: he says well the first people we decide to send to Mars should include archeologists.

GordonWhite: I think when Dr. Brandenburg says quote, “They want this information out,” if they did I would suggest they go to the New York Times. What they’ve done is given it to brilliant, rigorous, oddball groups because you’ve run a P&L. You know what it’s like. You don’t want the dog project on your books, but you do need the research anyway. That was Dr. Valet’s conclusion as to why FBI agents would show up to a UFO conference in the middle of nowhere. They’re not there in some kind of mysterious way that maybe someone’s [has] burst out with some secrets. They’re actually there because we’re in an area where we have to outsource the research because the disinfo. Component that comes with the National Security implications makes it very difficult to otherwise navigate.

Alex Tsakiris: What’s interesting about that is if you listen carefully to this interview, at least what I heard, was actually a realization by Brandenburg that that was going on. I don’t think he really quite thought of it in that way. Then you kept repeating that, “outsourcing the research” and then he said, “yeah, they outsourced the research to me.” Then when it was time, as the story goes, when it’s time to publish it, he doesn’t even know to publish it. They give him the signal, and the signal is nothing information. And he still doesn’t catch on. So then they nudge him a little bit further and [say], you know you really ought to publish that.

GordonWhite: Basically what we have is the best interpretive model for the atmospheric and soil data on Mars. The best one available is that this is an ancient nuclear explosion. Perfectly okay with 20 years down the track it turns out that there’s some kind of crazy, bearing in mind you’re a plasma physicist, some kind of crazy weird plasma event in space that could cause it.

Dr. Brandenburg: There’s always the possibility of some unknown natural phenomenon. But the only known phenomenon, unfortunately it’s not natural, but it’s certainly a well-known phenomenon, is the explosion of a very large nuclear device.

Two of these intersteallar, extra-terrestrial intelligences interacted on Mars. There was an indigenous species on Mars apparently that built a primitive civilization. Someone else came along and dropped two very large nuclear weapons on Mars apparently to sterilize the planet. They wanted to do death star on this thing. We’re talking someone like a Adalex or Governor Tarkin in Star Wars who was asked why hit Alderaan. He says, he other planet you specify, Tattleen is too remote to be a good example. We’re talking about someone doing this to set an example perhaps.

GordonWhite: I want to be clear because your data is so good and so compelling I want to be clear.

Dr. Brandenburg: Yes, we are led to a specific, dreadful scenario of a primitive species being wiped out by a spacefaring species.

GordonWhite: I want to play Devil’s advocate on that in a bit, but I just want to illustrate for the listeners that the data stops at nuclear airbursts. That’s where it stops. And so we look at the data we have and say now we have to interpret this. Your interpretation is a broadly bronze age, a culture on Mars being destroyed by another culture.

GordonWhite: It struck me as very interesting in the first half of the 20th Century it was taken as self-evident and not that big of a deal that there was either an existing culture on Mars or previous cultures on Mars and it’s only as we move into the post-war period that it starts to get a bit fishy but your von Braun quote is correct. It’s not just there, it’s NASA’s founding document. The think tanks that were providing strategy to NASA had in them the expectation that we would find ruined artifacts. It was part of NASA’s DNA from the beginning.

Dr. Brandenburg: It was our expectation to find ruined artifacts on Mars.

GordonWhite: So from the beginning it hasn’t been that odd of an idea. And you’re a plasma physicist but you have worked in some of the companies directly over the course of your career that have been involved in this off-planet science.

Dr. Brandenburg: Absolutely. i was part of the Clementine mission to the moon where we found billions of tons of frozen ice.

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